The recent mass drug donations to control and eliminate NTDs could prove uninteresting for research purposes if a problem of reproducibility arises.

The recent mass drug donations to control and eliminate neglected tropical diseases could prove uninteresting for research purposes if a problem of reproducibility arises. In order to improve the standardization of the operational procedures used, the Flemish Interuniversity Council developed seven visual tutorials focusing on schistosomiasis and soil-transmitted helminthiasis.

The first three tutorials provide detailed information on how to perform both traditional and newly developed methods to diagnose and quantify infections in stool, including Kato-Katz thick smear, McMaster egg counting method and Mini-FLOTAC.

The fourth tutorial gives guidance on how to organize the laboratory for assessing a large number of samples.

The fifth tutorial shows how to preserve stool samples for molecular analysis.

The sixth tutorial displays how to pool stool samples for a cost-effective assessment of infections.

The final tutorial illustrates how to assess anthelmintic drug efficacy against these neglected tropical diseases at a school.

The tutorials are made publically available at YouTube - CLICK HERE